What We Do is Secret: Should Punk Be Exposed on Celluloid?

I am by no means an expert on The Germs; in fact, I'm not even really a fan. To be honest, I just never sought them out, nor heard of them til a few years back, but at the same time, I was intrigued by a biopic made about them, Rodger Grossman's What We Do Is Secret. I suppose that being an avid music fan generally makes me interested in any film about music, and punk as a cultural/sociological phenomenon has interested me for years. All I knew going in to see the film last week at Cinematheque was that The Germs were a chaotic punk band from California in the late 70's and that their frontman, Darby Crash, overdosed on heroin just before the day that John Lennon was killed, overshadowing his final bid for immortality. I also knew that Shane West, the actor who first found fame in teen romantic comedies and later as part of the TV show ER, had apparently gotten so completely into his role as Darby Crash, that he actually became a member of the recent reformation of The Germs, adopting the moniker, Shane Wreck. Considering this rather slim amount of knowledge, rather than pontificate on whether the film was too slick for the documentary style it was going for, or whether it was actually true to the band members' lives and the facts, I'm more interested in the broader issue of punk rock movies. This musing comes from the experience of being in last Thursday's audience.

I didn't quite know what to expect as far as audience members, but I did assume they would behave like regular audiences that usually attend the independent/arthouse films that Cinematheque runs. I forgot to factor in the possibility that actual Germs fans might come to see the film. About ten or fifteen minutes into the film, I realized my mistake as a large group of "punks" continued to heckle and shout profanities at each other and the film for its entire duration. And they also kept leaving and returning (I know this because I had two girls in pathetically short skirts climb over me about six times). And they thought it would be rather "punk" to light up regular cigarettes in the non-smoking theatre. I know I'm old and I don't consider myself a punk (I love punk music and its aesthetic, but at heart, I could never have been a true punk), but this chaos around me, which emulated the chaos presented in the live shows on screen, really annoyed me. If I had wanted to feel like I was at a punk show, I wouldn't have chosen to watch a film about it. As I braced myself for flying bottles, which never did appear, I kept thinking, "Why show up to a film if you know you won't like it?" and "Why stay for a film if you clearly think it's crap?" In the angry haze of that entire hour and a half, straining to hear dialogue and actually follow the narrative, I didn't think too deeply about my situation. At the time, I did appreciate the life imitating art imitating life dynamic that was happening, but I didn't contemplate the possible reasons for why this was happening. All I really wanted was for Darby Crash to die already, so I could go home.

Now that my head is clearer and I don't wish to bottle every single one of those punk kids, I wonder about whom punk films are intended for. Are they intended for actual punks, or for the more objective voyeurs of punk? Should punk even be made into films? And what kind of films should they be? Just by looking at the list of punk films listed in Wikipedia, it becomes apparent that punk has definitely been filmed to death whether as documentary, mockumentary, or biopic. Whether those that ascribe to the punk subculture actually find The Great Rock 'n Roll Swindle, the Julien Temple mockumentary about the Sex Pistols, and Temple's later Sex Pistols documentary The Filth and the Fury, credible or not is hard to say. Footage of The Germs was included in Penelope Spheeris's documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, which featured other bands of the time like Black Flag and Circle Jerks, and perhaps the fact that it was real footage of the band rather than a neatly constructed narrative with leitmotifs would appease punk fans. At the same time, punk's power and identity was bound up in the pose of sneering and the rejection of everything, including art, which even documentaries ultimately are.

While documentaries featuring live footage of punk artists might seem more credible and true to the punk experience than creative endeavours or biopics, those who are members of the subculture want their subculture to remain as such - not paraded around by those they believe could never truly understand it. If I remember correctly, a lot of the punks in the first showing of Derek Jarman's Jubilee stood up and left. And his rendering of the UK punk scene was pretty nihilist and graphic - unlike the more tempered and formulaic What We Do is Secret. I wonder how many punks actually attended showings of Sid and Nancy.

Punk, like other subcultures, lives and thrives underground to spite the mainstream that either panics about it or wants to co-opt it, and I suppose the point is that punks would never be satisfied or happy about their subculture on celluloid no matter how much a filmmaker tried to enter the inner sanctum of the subculture. And in punk there is no inner sanctum anyway - nothing's supposed to be sacred. But then why should punks care about how their bands and subculture are portrayed on the screen either? Obviously their subculture in which nothing has meaning means something to them. It's a catch-22 that applies specifically to punks - they're supposed to hate everything and consider everything worthless in some sort of snot-nosed arrested adolescence, aspects which make you wonder why they bother caring to be a punk in the first place and which, in turn, led to punk's rather rapid downfall.

Apparently, the re-formed, and likely "reformed," Germs, with Mr. Wreck as their vocalist, played last year's Vans Warped Tour and will once again play this year. I can see why this might rankle both Germs fans and punk fans in general, especially considering the last I heard of Shane West's musical endeavours was a pseudo-punk effort that had a song on the A Walk to Remember soundtrack. Yes, alongside tracks by Mandy Moore and Switchfoot. Then again, anyone who thinks the Vans Warped Tour is punk shouldn't be too fussed anyway.

Lexicon Devil - The Germs

Circle One - The Germs

Human After All: Daft Punk's Electroma

I only recently got to see the 2006 film Electroma, which was directed and written by Daft Punk (Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo) and which recently released on DVD. Though I can't say I'm very familiar with previous Daft Punk film efforts, this piece does stand out as not including any music from the electro duo, and I think this aspect was key to its impression on me; rather than shoe-horn in music that doesn't fit the story or use predictable electronic music for a film about robots, Daft Punk chose to paint feelings onto their robots through strokes of genius music. Also, rather than donning the iconic helmets themselves this time, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo have Peter Hurteau and Michael Reich play the two hero automata, walking purposefully about in their Hedi Slimane-designed, skin-tight leather suits as the soundtrack alternates from an eerie, nearly uncomfortable silence, to the likes of Brian Eno, Haydn, Chopin, Linda Perhacs, and Sebastien Tellier. There's something about its cinematography that gives it a rougher '70's feel - like one of those older films predicting the future, not the slick CGI films of today.

The narrative of this minimalist sci-fi follows the two robot heroes in their failed quest to become human. While the visuals are hugely important, exploiting the alien-like sandscapes of the American southwest and using interesting effects in which white figures void out everything else in a white laboratory, the music is equally important through its restrained use. The film opens to silent abstract shots of the natural rock formations in the American southwest desert before the robot duo (one with a silver helmet and one with a gold one) get into their Ferrari and drive down endless highways, both silently and then to Todd Rundgren's International Feel, which communicates a very human feeling of excitement and adventure on the open road. When the robots finally enter a town, you realize that in this version of reality, everyone is a robot, making the duo's quest for humanity a stranger reversal of Frankenstein. Interspersed throughout the film are inexplicable flames, a portent of a grim ending, licking at the celluloid and burning into the narrative.

In this film, music tends to come as a relief for the pregnant silences, and I found myself actually musing about the choice of music for each scenario it illustrated; the music's meaning was heightened to the point that it couldn't be merely ignored or subsumed into the background. For example, after the heroes' helmets are covered in oversized, plastic human faces, they stroll proudly through the streets to the hugely appropriate, jaunty Billy Jack by Curtis Mayfield. Their stroll and the song abruptly ends as the duo confront a child robot holding an ice cream cone and he/she drops it on the pavement in one of the most salient images of the movie. Of course without the skillful manipulation of music and silence, this specific shot wouldn't have carried the meaning it does. The music shifts soon after to sombre choir music as the two heroes are chased by an impassive mob of robot citizens; the contrast to the earlier Mayfield is palpable as the heroes no longer strut, but stumble along, trying to shield themselves from the sun, which is melting their human masks into deformity. When they take refuge in a run-down public toilet, the gold robot furiously tears at his human mask and wig, and in another salient image, his human face stares up at the camera while being flushed down the toilet. In contrast and without the aid of dialogue, the silver-headed robot appears more reluctant to shed the grotesque remnants of his human face as he stares at himself in the mirror and a faulty lightbulb strobes and sways above him, mimicking the silver robot's emotional turmoil.

One of the main criticisms of Electroma was the sequence in which the two robot heroes walk endlessly through the sun-baked salt flats - and I will admit it's pretty wearisome and tedious, but at the same time, I can see why it was likely included to highlight just how pointless, lonely and endless their quest is. This sequence also reveals subtleties that foreshadow their unhappy end, particularly the fact the silver robot's head remains slightly bowed as he walks while the gold robot remains completely erect; of course this small detail blossoms into fruition as the silver robot begins to lag behind his more purposeful companion. After forcing his gold-headed companion to trigger the detonator on his back, the silver automaton walks a fair distance away to commit a rather explosive suicide. As the gold robot ranges over the cracked earth, which is covered in shards of black plastic and metal, his grief is made poignant and real with classical piano translating via minor chords.

During yet another deafening silence, in one of the most pitiful and memorable scenes of the film, the remaining hero is helplessly writhing, his helmet grinding into the dust, trying to no avail to reach the detonating lever on his own back. Ultimately, the robot decides to remove his helmet, and when he does, I actually felt surprised - because I had so much emotionally invested in these robots, I was a little unsettled by the flat circuitboard face even though I knew there wouldn't be a human face beneath the helmet. Ultimately, the gold robot sets himself on fire with the same sun that stripped him of his dream of being human, and the film closes with the gold robot as a figure in flames, striding across the darkened, voided landscape as the haunting and mournful Jackson C. Frank's Dialogue plays. In my opinion, the song is the star of this scene.

This film had more of an emotional effect on me than I would have expected. Because this film is about robots, who ostensibly cannot have emotions, but who in the heroes' case do have, the soundtrack, with its alternation between clinical silence and beautiful, affective pieces of music, reflects this dilemma. And unlike a ham-fisted music video of quick cuts and less than salient imagery, this film is a piece of art that unfolds naturally with its music, building, receding, undulating. Despite my pre-conceived notions of a Daft Punk film, Electroma is a well-crafted piece that, for me, emphasizes the connection of music to affect, the connection between music and humanity. Where even the long, blank stares of robots with only a black visor in place of human features, can convey that, in fact, they are human after all.


Human After All - Daft Punk

I Want to Be Alone (Dialogue) - Jackson C. Frank